On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:58:13 +0000, Thomas Ronayne wrote:

> I've a brand-new Dell Inspiron 6000 that I've repartitioned to dual boot
> Slackware 10.1 and that "other" operating system. I'm loaded the bare
> kernel.
>
> One problem is that I don't know what to do to turn on DMA (the boot
> sequence complains that DMA is off and as a result file access will be
> pitifully slow; it is). I can't monkey with the BIOS (it won't let you)
> and setting the thing in the "other" system doesn't seem to make it work
> in Slackware. The thing has an Intel 82801FMB Ultra ATA storage
> controller (primary and secondary IDE channel controller) and beyond
> that I'm clueless.
>
> Anybody know how to turn on the go-fast switch? Is there a boot option I
> haven't been able to discover, anything?
>
> Thanks.

hdparm as root will provide the options you are looking for.
hdparm -h gives the listing of available options.

hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda for example turns on dma for the first ide drive

HTH